5 Weird Whale Facts You Probably Didn’t Know

Whales are cool and we know that. What about all the weird questions we have about them? You know, the things that you wouldn’t necessarily want to ask a friend or even captain Andrew on a whale watching tour?

Hopefully this post can answer a couple of those questions for you. Maybe even some questions you never even had. You might even learn something that you wish you hadn’t known…

WEIRD FACTS ABOUT WHALES:

Whales pee a lot.

As you would expect of an animal of whale size, they pee a lot. In fact, according to the Canadian Journal of Zoology a fin whale can pee as much as 257 gallons PER DAY! Kinda gross, but kinda cool.

Killer Whales aren’t whales.

Wait what? You didn’t read that wrong, the orca (or better known as a killer whale) is actually part of the dolphin family. Legend has it, they got their nickname from sailers who would refer to the animals as ‘whale killers’ this then turned into killer whale, which is where the confusion comes from!

Killer Whales can’t smell.

It’s true, you can pass gas right beside them and they won’t even notice! Killer whales instead have excellent hearing and sight which helps them survive. Their hearing is actually better than that of a dog or bat!

Killer Whales Never Sleep.

Sort of. Killer whales cannot fully sleep because they need to go to the surface to breath. The animal is able to put half of it’s brain to sleep, while the other half is awake. This makes it so killer whales never are fully asleep.

They’re Mama’s Boys.

It has been shown that male orca’s are less likely to survive if they lose their mother. Moreover, young males were 3 times more likely to die the year after their mothers death than males whose mother was still around. Looks like they aren’t as tough as their name suggests.

Those are 5 weird facts about whales. Hopefully you learned something you didn’t know before. Now you can brag to your friends about knowing how much whales pee. So cool.

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